WHAT  CONSTITUTES 

A MISSIONARY  CALL 


ROBERT  E.  SPEER,  D.D. 


INTERCHURCH  WORLD  MOVEMENT 
OF  NORTH  AMERICA 

45  WEST  18TH  STREET  NEW  YORK  CITY 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/whatconstitutesOOspee 


What  Constitutes  A 
Missionary  Call 


An  Address 

Delivered  at  the  Student 
Conferences 


by 


ROBERT  E.  SPEER,  D.D. 

Secretary,  Presbyterian  Board  of 
Foreign  Missions 


INTERCHURCH  WORLD  MOVEMENT 
OF  NORTH  AMERICA 


45  West  18th  Street 


New  York  City 


Reprinted  by  the  Interchurch  World  Move- 
ment, by  Courtesy  of  the  Student  Volunteer 
Movement  For  Foreign  Missions. 


Price,  5 cents  each,  50  cents 
per  dozen,  $2.75  per  hundred. 


What  Constitutes  A 
Missionary  Call 


What  constitutes  a missionary  call?  I 
think  almost  all  of  us  are  familiar  with  the 
issue  that  is  involved  in  this  question ; 
some  of  us  because  we  have  faced  it  in  our 
own  lives  and  have  tried  to  work  our  way 
through  to  an  answer;  and  some  of  us 
because  we  have  met  it  in  the  lives  of  other 
men,  some  of  whom  were  honestly  endeav- 
oring to  find  an  answer  to  it,  and  others  of 
whom  were  making  it  a cover  for  all  sorts 
of  immoral  subterfuges  and  evasions  and 
unveracities  of  character. 

In  two  regards  it  is  a good  sign  that  men 
ask  this  question  with  reference  to  the  work 
of  foreign  missions  and  their  duty  to  it.  It 
suggests  that  men  think  of  the  missionary 
enterprise  as  a solemn  enterprise,  an  enter- 
prise that  is  related  in  a singular  way  to 
God,  and  over  which  God  exercises  a singu- 
lar care ; and  in  the  second  place  it  indicates 
that  they  believe,  if  they  are  sincere,  that 
their  lives  are  owned  by  a Person  who  has 
a right  to  direct  them  and  whose  call  they 
must  await.  When  that  has  been  said,  how- 
ever, I think  everything  has  been  said  that 
can  be  allowed  in  favor  of  that  question, 
and  I want  to  go  on  at  once  to  say  that  it 
is  a question  which  can  easily  become  thor- 
oughly heathen  and  un-Christian. 

By  what  right  do  we  sever  our  life  into 
departments,  either  geographically  or  other- 


4 


What  Constitutes  a 


wise,  and  Say  tvith  reference  to  certain 
departments  of  life,  “Now  I will  not  enter 
upon  that  sphere  of  life  until  I have  a call 
different  in  degree  or  kind  from  the  call 
with  which  I would  be  satisfied  to  enter 
upon  any  other  department  of  life?”  What 
right  has  any  man  to  be  willing  to  study 
law  under  any  less  positive  assurance  that 
it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he  should  do  it 
than  a man  must  have  who  goes  out  into  ; 
the  mission  field?  You  and  I have  no  right  I 
to  set  off  certain  departments  of  life  from 
other  departments  and  to  say  of  those, 
“Those  departments  are  different  from 
others;  we  will  not  think  of  entering  upon 
those  without  special  divine  sanction,  with- 
out an  unusual  sort  of  divine  leading  differ- 
ent from  the  kind  with  which  we  would  "be 
satisfied  to  enter  upon  any  other  branch  of 
service.”  What  is  there  in  the  Rio  Grande 
to  compel  a man  to  have  one  kind  of  as- 
surance that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he  ; 
should  preach  on  the  south  side  of  it,  and 
another  kind  that  he  should  preach  on  the 
north  side  of  it?  Is  this  world  so  different  1 
in  different  parts  of  it  that  I should  be  will- 
ing to  work  in  Texas  on  grounds  that  I I 
should  not  regard  as  sufficient  to  allow  me  : 
to  work  in  Mexico?  What  is  there  in  the  ^ 
oceans  that  warrants  a man  demanding  evi- 
dence that  it  is  the  will  of  God  that  he 
should  work  on  one  side  of  them  that  he  ' 
does  not  demand  as  justifying  his  working 
on  the  other?  This  conception  of  distinc- 
tion in  the  sacredness  of  spheres  of  life  is 
pagan.  Christianity  contends  that  the  whole 
life  and  all  service  are  to  be  consecrated  ! 


i 


Missionary  Call 


5 


and  that  no  man  dare  do  anything  but  the 
will  of  God  and  can  know  nothing  less  or 
more  than  that  it  is  God’s  will  that  he 
should  adopt  any  course.  And  there  can  be 
no  more  than  this  either  required  or  pos- 
sible in  the  case  of  foreign  missions. 

Suppose  I were  a slave  owned  by  a 
master,  and  cotton  was  ready  to  be  picked, 
and  the  order  had  gone  out  from  my  mas- 
ter that  the  cotton  must  be  picked  at  all 
hazards  all  over  the  plantation : because  he 
had  not  come  personally  to  me  to  speak  to 
me,  might  I plead,  “In  the  absence  of  any 
specific  call  from  my  master,  to  pick  cotton, 
I will  go  a-fishing,  or  I will  do  some  busi- 
ness of  my  own?”  Is  it  not  a fair  analogy? 
You  and  I stand  in  a world  where  the 
Master’s  work  needs  to  be  done.  He  has 
told  us  to  go  out  into  this  world  and  do  His 
work.  Because  He  has  not  come  and  spoken 
individually  to  us  and  said,  “This  work  is 
your  individual  work,”  are  we  therefore 
free  to  go  about  our  own  business  ? 

And  if  men  are  going  to  draw  lines  of 
division  between  different  departments  of 
service,  what  preposterous  reasoning  leads 
them  to  think  that  it  requires  less  divine 
sanction  for  a man  to  spend  his  life  easily 
among  Christian  people  than  it  requires  for 
him  to  go  out  as  a missionary  to  the 
heathen?  If  men  are  to  have  special  calls 
for  anything,  they  ought  to  have  special 
calls  to  go  about  their  own  business,  to  have 
a nice  time  all  their  lives,  to  choose  the  soft 
places,  and  to  make  money,  and  to  gratify 
their  own  ambitions.  How  can  any  honest 
Christian  man  demand  a call  not  to  do  that 


6 


What  Constitutes  a 


sort  of  thing,  and  say  that  unless  he  gets 
some  specific  call  of  God  to  preach  the 
gospel  to  the  heathen,  he  has  a perfect  right 
to  spend  his  life  lining  his  pockets  with 
money?  Is  it  not  absurd  to  allege  that  a 
special  missionary  call  is  necessary,  while  a 
man  may  go  on  any  pretext  into  any  work 
that  means  simply  the  gratification  of  his 
own  will  or  personal  ambitions? 

There  is  a dilemma  involved  in  this 
erroneous  conception  of  the  missionary  call. 
We  believe  surely  that  God  has  an  interest 
in  the  evangelization  of  the  world.  If  He 
has  an  interest  in  the  evangelization  of  the 
world, — I mean  any  particular  interest  in 
it,  that  leads  Him  to  desire  to  have  it 
done, — He  must  have  “called”  enough  men, 
on  the  theory  that  He  does  call  men  in  that 
special  way,  to  evangelize  the  world.  Well, 
it  has  not  been  evangelized.  So  either  God 
has  not  called  them,  or  else  He  has  called 
them  and  they  have  not  gone.  You  who 
believe  that  this  kind  of  a special  call  is 
necessary  have  to  believe  in  consequence 
that  there  are  a lot  of  men  around  this 
country  who  have  been  called  in  this  super- 
natural way  into  the  mission  work  and  have 
not  gone,  or  else  that  God  has  no  particular 
interest  in  the  present  evangelization  of  the 
world,  or  else  you  have  to  abandon  this 
notion  of  special  missionary  calls. 

After  all,  what  do  men  mean  when  they 
speak  of  the  necessity  of  a special  mission- 
ary call?  Do  they  mean  that  a man  has  to 
have  some  supernatural  kind  of  mechanical 
indication  of  the  divine  will  ? “A  call,” 
men  say,  “for  example,  like  that  that  came 


Missionary  Call 


7 


to  the  apostle  Paul ; I would  be  satisfied 
with  that.  Or  the  kind  of  a call  I have 
heard  Bishop  Thoburn  speak  of ; I would  be 
satisfied  with  that.”  I believe  they  had 
these  experiences,  but  I do  not  believe  it  is 
necessary  that  everyone  should  have  them. 
David  Livingstone  had  no  such  call.  He 
says  himself  that  he  went  simply  out  of  a 
sense  of  duty.  William  Goodell  had  no  such 
call.  He  consecrated  himself  behind  an  old 
tree  stump  at  Andover  over  his  Bible  and 
the  last  command  of  Jesus  Christ.  Henry 
Martyn,  William  Carey,  Keith-Falconer, 
nine-tenths  of  the  great  missionaries  of  the 
world  never  had  any  such  calls.  Now  if  a 
call  like  this  is  necessary  before  a man  may 
be  sure  that  it  is  his  duty  to  go  out  to  the 
mission  field,  did  these  men  do  wrong  in 
going?  Do  you  say  that  the  noblest  men 
that  ever  served  Cod  in  the  world  flew  in 
the  face  of  Providence  because  they  did  not 
have  the  particular  sort  of  call  you  are  ask- 
ing for? 

Or  a man  says  he  wants  a dream.  The 
other  night  I dreamed  that  I went  trout 
fishing,  and  I met  a lady,  and  she  asked  me 
for  my  rod,  and  I loaned  it  to  her,  and  she 
cast  the  fly  through  a window  of  a grain 
elevator  and  caught  a little  black  puppy. 
Now  do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  that  was 
a divine  indication  of  what  my  duty  was  to 
be  on  the  following  day?  And  yet  there 
are  scores  of  men  who  would  laugh  at  this 
illustration  who  have  hid  behind  the  pitiful 
evasion  that  they  lack  a nocturnal  mission- 
ary call,  who  have  alleged  if  only  some 
divine  leading  might  come  to  them  of  the 


8 


What  Constitutes  a 


kind  that  came  to  Paul,  they  would  go. 
Dreams  do  not  exempt  men  from  the  use 
of  reason.  God  does  not  call  men  in  absurd 
and  frivolous  ways.  If  God  is  going  to 
have  dealings  with  you,  He  will  have  them 
in  the  broad  daylight.  That  was  the  time  of 
all  but  one  of  Paul’s  missionary  visions.  It 
is  not  necessary  for  Him  to  go  about  in  the 
night  when  our  wits  are  asleep  to  show  us 
what  His  will  for  us  in  this  world  is.  He 
is  going  to  deal  with  us  as  men,  and  expects 
us  to  judge  as  we  judge  between  our  dreams 
as  to  what  ones  of  them  are  nonsense  and 
what  ones  of  them  fall  in  line  with  the 
rational  purpose  of  God  for  us  revealed 
in  the  facts  of  the  world  and  of  our  own 
lives. 

Or  a man  says  that  he  does  not  feel 
specially  called.  Well,  feelings  are  often  a 
mere  matter  of  health;  more  often  they  are 
a matter  of  other  things.  They  are  not 
lawless  and  unordered.  You  and  I do  not 
regulate  our  lives  by  mere  feelings  in  other 
regards.  Feelings  spring  from  the  stock  of 
information  in  our  intellects,  from  the  atti- 
tude of  our  wills,  from  the  bearing  of  our 
hearts  toward  God  and  toward  the  world. 
If  we  do  not  “fceljcalled”  the  most  natural 
explanation  is  not  that  we  are  not  called 
but  that  our  feelings  spring  from  unin- 
formed minds,  from  careless  hearts,  from 
unsurrendered  wills.  This  is  the  explana- 
tion of  the  absence  of  calls  which  Dean 
Vaughan  suggested:  “Know,  and  you  will 
feel ; know,  and  you  will  pray ; know,  and 
you  will  help.  You  will  be  ashamed  of  the 
sluggishness,  of  the  isolation,  of  the  selfish- 


Missionary  Call 


9 


ness  which  has  made  you  think  only  of  your 
own  people  and  your  father’s  house.”  Men 
cannot  define  what  they  mean  by  the  “mis- 
sionary call”  without  getting  into  difficulty, 
and  in  the  case  of  all  men  who  are  really 
called  convincing  their  own  minds,  if  they 
are  honest  and  fair  men,  that  they  must  go, 
while  if  they  have  been  selfish  and  insincere 
they  will  discover  that  they  have  not  been 
open  to  any  such  missionary  call  as  they 
allege  they  believe  to  be  necessary  to  war- 
rant a man’s  going  out  into  the  foreign 
mission  field. 

I believe  that  a great  deal  of  the  con- 
fusion that  surrounds  this  subject — and 
there  is  much  of  it — springs  from  the  fail- 
ure to  discriminate  between  two  clearly  dif- 
ferent things : one,  the  will  of  God  for  me ; 
and  the  other,  the  method  of  the  manifes- 
tation of  that  will  to  me.  It  is  a matter  of 
no  consequence  to  me  how  God  reveals  His 
will  to  me;  what  I want  to  know  is  what 
that  will  is.  It  may  come  in  some  mysteri- 
ous way ; it  may  come  from  the  voice  of  a 
friend ; it  may  come  through  the  influence 
of  some  address  or  book.  I care  not ; the 
supreme  thing  is  that  God  has  a will  for 
every  man  of  us,  and  that  no  man  of  us  has 
any  right  to  specify  one  way,  and  one  way 
alone,  in  which  that  will  may  be  revealed  to 
him,  or  to  discriminate  against  any  one 
work  in  life  by  conditioning  God  and  re- 
quiring of  Him  some  peculiar  mode  of  pro- 
cedure in  summoning  us  to  that  work. 

The  whole  thing  reduces  itself  to  this 
simple  proposition.  There  is  a general 
obligation  resting  upon  Christian  men  to 


10 


What  Constitutes  a 


see  that  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is 
preached  to  the  woi^ld.  You  and  I need  no 
special  call  to  apply  that  general  call  to  our 
lives.  We  do  need  a special  call  to  exempt 
us  from  its  application  to  our  lives.  In 
other  words,  the  presumption  under  which 
we  are  living  may  be  held  to  be  the  pre- 
sumption that  the  great  will  of  God  desired 
beyond  the  peradventure  of  a mistake  that 
the  gospel  of  His  son  Jesus  Christ,  the  only 
Saviour,  should  be  made  known  to  the 
whole  world,  should  be  carried  to  every 
creature  in  the  world.  You  and  I need  no 
special  divine  revelation  to  our  own  per- 
sonal lives  to  indicate  that  we  fall  under 
that  general  duty.  What  we  need  is  a spe- 
cial call  to  assure  us  that  we  are  exempt 
from  personal  obedience  to  that  presump- 
tive and  general  duty. 

But  there  are  men  who  say,  “I  deny  that 
there  is  any  such  presumption.  The  pre- 
sumption is  in  favor  of  a man’s  staying  just 
where  he  was  born.”  Well,  then,  if  there 
is  such  a presumption  as  that,  it  is  over- 
come by  the  greater  need  of  the  world. 
When  a man  stands  face  to  face  with  such 
a need  as  that  which  exists  here,  and  then 
contrasts  it  with  the  need  that  exists  over 
there,  I believe  he  must  see  that  that  need 
overcomes  any  mere  presumption,  if  such 
did  exist,  in  behalf  of  a man’s  staying  here. 
But  I deny  that  there  is  any  such  presump- 
tion. You  cannot  defend  the  presumption 
that  every  man  ought  to  stay  in  the  condi- 
tion in  which  he  is  born.  If  I am  born  in  a 
deadly,  unhealthful  region,  is  there  a pre- 
sumption that  I should  stay  there?  If  I 


Missionary  Call 


11 


am  born  a kleptomaniac,  is  there  presump- 
tion in  favor  of  my  continuing  so  all  my 
life?  It  is  nonsense  for  then  to  allege  that 
the  mere  fact  of  having  been  born  in  such 
and  such  a condition  puts  them  under  a 
presumption  of  duty  to  remain  there.  The 
fact  that  you  are  born  in  a Christian  land 
creates  just  the  contrary  presumption,  the 
presumption,  namely,  that  you  are  to  carry 
what  exists  here  to  the  lands  where  it  does 
not  exist. 

There  are  men  who  say,  “No,  you  are 
unfair  in  that.  We  hold  that  there  is  no 
presumption  either  way,  that  every  man 
ought  to  stand  with  a perfectly  open  and 
impartial  mind  before  the  question  of  the 
duty  of  his  life  to  the  world,  not  casting  the 
weight  on  either  side  of  the  scale.”  That 
would  be  all  right  if  you  and  I were  living 
in  little  boats  but  in  the  middle  of  the 
Pacific  ocean,  but  it  is  impossible  so  long 
as  we  are  here.  No  presumption!  Why, 
the  atmosphere  in  which  we  live  coerces 
and  shapes  us  in  spite  of  ourselves  and 
creates  a powerful  actual  presumption.  All 
those  tentacles  that  every  day  are  clinging 
closer  and  closer  to  us  are  setting  at  prej- 
udice the  interests  of  the  other  half  of  the 
world.  We  do  not  live  where  it  is  possible 
for  any  of  us  to  say,  “I  will  just  move  along 
steadily,  no  presumption  on  either  side,  un- 
til some  special  indication  of  duty  comes  to 
me.”  I believe  that  Keith-Falconer  was 
expressing  the  truth  when  he  closed  those 
last  addresses  of  his  to  the  students  of  Edin- 
burgh and  Glasgow  with  the  sentence : 
“While  vast  continents  are  shrouded  in  al- 


12 


What  Constitutes  a 


most  utter  darkness,  and  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions suffer  the  horrors  of  heathenism  and 
of  Islam,  the  burden  of  proof  rests  on  you 
to  show  that  the  circumstances  in  which 
God  has  placed  you  were  meant  by  God  to 
keep  you  out  of  the  foreign  field.”  In  other 
words,  every  man  of  us  stands  under  a pre- 
sumptive obligation  to  give  his  life  to  the 
world  unless  we  have  some  special  exemp- 
tion granted  personally  to  us  that  excuses 
us  from  the  weight  of  this  general  and  pre- 
sumptive obligation. 

I am  willing  to  go  further  than  that.  If 
I were  standing  by  the  bank  of  a stream, 
and  some  little  children  were  drowning  in 
the  stream,  I would  not  need  any  officer  of 
the  law  to  come  along  and  serve  on  me  some 
legal  paper,  in  which  my  name  was  definite- 
ly entered,  commanding  me  under  such  and 
such  penalties  to  rescue  those  drowning 
children.  I should  despise  myself  if  I 
should  stand  there,  with  the  possibility  of 
saving  those  little  lives,  waiting  until  by 
some  legal  proceeding  I was  personally 
designated  to  rescue  them.  Or,  if  you  do 
not  like  that  figure,  I can  suggest  another. 
I have  some  neighbors  who  are  starving, 
and  I have  bread  in  abundance,  and  I stand 
and  watch  them  day  by  day,  with  pinched 
faces,  ravenous,  suffering  agonies,  while  I 
have  bread  in  abundance  and  to  spare.  I 
do  not  need  anybody  to  come  with  any  court 
order  specifying  me  as  an  individual  bound 
to  feed  those  hungry  souls.  You  would  not 
either.  Why  do  we  apply,  in  a matter  of 
infinitely  more  consequence,  principles  that 
we  would  loathe  and  abhor  if  anybody 


Missionary  Call 


13 


should  suggest  that  we  should  apply  them 
in  the  practical  affairs  of  our  daily  life? 
Listen  for  a moment  to  the  wail  of  the 
hungry  world,  feel  for  one  hour  its  suffer- 
ings, sympathize  for  one  moment  with  its 
woes,  and  then  regard  it  just  as  you  would 
regard  human  want  in  your  neighbor,  or 
the  want  that  you  meet  as  you  pass  down 
the  street,  or  anywhere  in  life.  Every  one 
of  us  rests  under  a sort  of  general  obliga- 
tion to  give  life  and  time  and  possession  to 
the  evangelization  of  the  souls  ever3rwhere 
that  have  never  heard  of  Jesus  Christ,  and 
we  are  bound  to  go,  unless  we  can  offer 
some  sure  ground  of  exemption  which  we 
could  with  a clear  conscience  present  to 
Jesus  Christ,  and  be  sure  of  His  approval 
upon  it. 

Now  what  grounds  of  exemption  are 
just?  A man  says,  “Well,  the  inability  to 
learn  a language  constitutes  a ground  of 
exemption.”  Yes,  if  it  is  real;  but  is  there 
any  man  that  will  allege  that  as  his  dis- 
ability? Most  of  you  talk  one  language  al- 
ready. I could  imagine  a mute  alleging  that 
excuse,  but  not  an  adult  man  who  has  man- 
aged to  get  into  college.  We  have  learned 
one  language.  There  are  a few  million 
babies  in  this  country  learning  a language 
now,  and  they  haven’t  nearly  as  good  a start 
at  learning  a language  as  you  and  I have. 
There  is  a multitude  of  ignorant  people 
coming  over  here  from  the  slums  of  Europe, 
and  before  very  long  many  of  them,  with 
dull  and  undisciplined  minds,  will  be  speak- 
ing our  language  fluently.  The  brain  is  not 
the  only  faculty  used  in  the  acquisition  of  a 


14 


What  Constitutes  a 


new  language.  A man  who  mingles  among 
the  people  takes  the  language  in  through 
his  pores.  And  after  all  the  great  faculty 
is  the  will.  If  a man  wills  to  learn  and  goes 
out  among  the  people,  he  will  learn.  Any 
man  who  has  a jaw  can  learn  a second  lan- 
guage, just  as  he  learned  a first,  if  he  wills 
to  do  it  and  sinks  himself  among  the  people 
to  whom  he  goes.  It  is  a very  different 
thing  learning  a language  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world  from  trying  to  pick  it  up  here. 
As  Mr.  Wilder  used  to  put  it,  learning  a 
language  here  is  just  like  pouring  water  in 
the  little  interstices  of  a sponge  for  a day 
or  two  until  you  get  it  full,  while  learning 
a language  over  there  is  sousing  your 
sponge  in  the  water  and  letting  it  penetrate 
every  pore.  Every  man  of  us  who  has 
learned  one  language  is  able  to  learn  an- 
other if  we  want  to  and  will  put  our  lives 
into  it. 

Some  one  says,  “Isn’t  want  of  health  a 
sufficient  excuse?”  Yes,  but  you  are  not 
always  a trustworthy  judge.  In  our  Board 
we  distrust  a man’s  judgment  on  this  point 
unless  we  know  what  his  own  personal  atti- 
tude is  toward  the  missionary  enterprise. 
We  want  men  to  judge  the  physical  capaci- 
ties of  candidates  who  have  a heart  for  the 
evangelization  of  the  world  as  well.  I urge 
freely  that  a man  who  has  no  proper 
physical  qualifications  ought  not  to  go,  but 
I fear  that  few  men  are  competent  to  say 
for  themselves  whether  they  are  thus  quali- 
fied or  not.  I remember  a story  that  Mr. 
Forman  used  to  tell  of  an  interview  he  had 
with  a student  in  the  state  of  Iowa,  who  al- 


Missionary  Call 


15 


leged  as  a reason  for  not  going  as  a mis- 
sionary to  India  that  he  had  had  a sun- 
stroke. He  proposed  accordingly  to  spend 
his  life  in  Iowa.  “Well,  my  friend,”  said 
Mr.  Forman,  “where  did  you  have  that  sun- 
stroke?” “I  had  it  here  in  this  state.” 
“Now,  look  here,”  said  Mr.  Forman,  “I 
have  lived  most  of  my  life  in  India,  and  I 
have  never  had  a sunstroke,  and  you  pro- 
pose to  spend  your  life  where  you  have  al- 
ready had  one  sunstroke  and  where  for  all 
you  know  you  may  have  another.” 

Now  Mission  Boards  are  not  looking  for 
men  liable  to  sunstroke.  They  purpose  to 
act  with  good  sense  and  because  they  do  act 
so,  they  know  that  often  a man  who  is  not 
perfect  physically  will  be  as  well  in  Chili  or 
Korea  or  China  or  India  as  he  will  be  here 
at  home,  and  that  it  is  worth  while  running 
a little  risk  for  the  sake  of  the  good  work 
that  he  will  be  likely  to  do.  It  is  exceed- 
ingly easy  for  the  man  who  wants  to,  to  find 
some  subterfuge  by  which  he  can  escape 
from  the  grip  of  duty  and  the  privilege  of 
glorious  sacrifice  in  life. 

Or  a man  says,  “Is  not  the  want  of 
spiritual  qualifications  an  adequate  exemp- 
tion?” Never.  No  self-created  excuse  can 
keep  a man  out  of  the  mission  field.  Every 
man  of  us  may  have  all  the  spiritual  quali- 
fications necessary  for  missionary  work,  and 
if  we  do  not  have  them,  it  is  a difficulty 
which  springs  from  our  own  moral  delin- 
quency and  not  from  any  of  those  circum- 
stances beyond  our  control  in  which  alone 
can  lie  an  adequate  exemption.  A man  not 
spiritually  fitted  ought  not  to  go,  but  neither 


16 


What  Constitutes  a 


is  he  fit  to  stay.  His  immediate  duty  is  to 
clean  up  and  empower  his  life. 

Or  a man  says,  “Is  not  the  great  need 
here  at  home  an  adequate  excuse  ?”  Where  ? 
where?  What  great  need  do  you  mean 
here  in  the  United  State?  Do  you  mean 
the  great  need  out  in  the  western  states  ? I 
could  name  half  a dozen  on  the  moment 
whose  combined  population  is  less  than  the 
population  of  the  city  of  New  York,  and 
they  are  the  great  home  mission  fields  in 
the  west,  and  they  have  a Protestant  evan- 
gelistic agency  at  work  in  them  immensely 
greater  than  that  employed  in  the  whole 
city  of  New  York.  Besides,  are  you  going 
there?  As  for  the  cities,  there  are  in  New 
York  below  Fourteenth  Street  for  about 
half  a million  people  more  than  one  hundred 
Protestant  chapels  and  churches.  And  are 
you  going  there?  A man  is  something  be- 
neath contempt  who  alleges  as  a reason  for 
not  going  to  the  foreign  mission  field  the 
existence  of  a need  at  home  to  which  he 
has  not  the  slightest  intention  of  devoting 
his  life.  He  may  pass  for  a very  religious 
man,  he  may  be  waiting  piously  for  a call, 
but  he  is  a*  dishonest  man  and  there  is  a core 
of  insincerity  in  his  heart.  No,  the  need 
here  in  the  United  States  constitutes  no 
adequate  exemption  from  the  missionary 
call.  If  a man  has  got  a special  call  to  some 
definite  work  here  at  ’home,  I grant  that 
that  may  constitute  an  exemption.  I believe 
there  are  men  who  are  exempt  from  the 
general  call  because  of  the  manifestly 
definite  and  special  divine  work  that  is  laid 
upon  their  shoulders  here,  but  no  man  dare 


Missionary  Call 


17 


allege  a mere  general  need  existing  here  at 
home,  least  of  all  a general  need  which  he 
intends  subsequently  to  ignore,  and  under 
the  cover  of  that,  slip  out  from  the  grip  of 
the  missionary  obligation.  No  man  has  a 
right  to  settle  in  a little  country  town  in 
Ohio  and  practice  law,  on  the  ground  that 
there  is  so  much  greater  need  for  Christian 
work  in  the  slums  of  New  York  than  in 
central  Africa.  No  man  has  a right  to  go 
into  business  in  Montreal  under  the  pretext 
that  the  vast  West  is  so  much  more  needy 
than  China.  If  I refuse  to  preach  the 
gospel  in  India  because  it  needs  to  be 
preached  in  Arizona,  or  Assiniboia,  what 
relevancy  does  that  argument  have  to  my 
preaching  the  gospel  nowhere,  but  subse- 
quently settling  down  to  an  easy  and  self- 
ish life  in  Savannah  or  Halifax?  Or  what 
consistency  is  there  in  refusing  to  go  to 
Siam  because  the  need  of  Christian  work 
in  the  rural  districts  in  America  is  so  great, 
and  then  settling  down  to  preach  the  gospel 
in  some  city  or  large  town?  The  funda- 
mental necessity  of  life  and  character  is 
veracity,  and  such  a course  is  the  antithesis 
of  veracity. 

Or  a man  says : ‘T  have  already  started 
to  prepare  for  some  work  here  at  home.  I 
am  on  my  medical  course,  or  my  law  course, 
or  my  course  in  pedagogy.  Do  you  mean 
I am  to  throw  up  all  I have  gained  and  go 
out  to  the  mission  field?”  I do  not  say  so. 
I do  say  that  the  fact  that  you  have  got  so 
far  does  not  constitute  a presumption  that 
you  are  exempt.  All  that  special  training 
may  have  been  given  you  for  some  specific 


18 


What  Constitutes  a 


purpose ; no  knowledge  is  lost  out  on  the 
mission  field.  Besides,  I ask  you  just  to 
stop  and  think  a moment.  You  men  have 
already  got  your  professions  chosen  and  are 
headed  toward  them,  and  many  of  you  have 
only  considered  the  necessity  of  a call  as  a 
sort  of  afterthought  when  forced  to  face 
foreign  missions ; you  never  thought  of  it 
when  you  were  making  your  choice  of  your 
profession,  but  only  now  when  the  mission- 
ary claim  is  pressing  a little  uneasily  upon 
your  consciences.  But  are  you  sure  that 
God  wants  you  to  be  a doctor  or  a teacher? 
Ought  you  not  to  have  as  much  assurance 
that  it  is  God’s  will  that  you  should  be,  as 
you  think  is  needed  in  the  case  of  a foreign 
missionary?  As  a Christian  man,  your  life 
belongs  to  Christ  and  your  business  is  to 
do  the  will  of  God.  Are  you  convinced  that 
it  is  the  will  of  God  that  you  should  go  on 
with  your  preparation  for  some  secular 
work  at  home?  If  not,  have  you  a right  to 
go. on  with  it?  If  you  think  you  have,  will 
you  not  admit  the  legitimacy  of  the  same 
element  of  possible  uncertainty  in  the  mis- 
sionary call? 

What  profession  is  it  that  you  believe 
warrants  you  in  giving  your  life  to  it  in- 
stead of  to  the  missionary  enterprise?  Is 
it  law?  I have  no  word  to  say  against  the 
practice  of  law.  But  I remind  you,  as  Mr. 
Depew  is  reported  to  have  stated  to  the 
graduating  class  in  the  Yale  Law  School 
some  years  ago,  that  there  were  then  more 
than  60,000  lawyers  in  this  land ; and,  as 
Justice  Brewer  is  said  to  have  declared  at  a 
meeting  of  the  American  Bar  Association, 


Missionary  Call 


19 


in  St.  Louis,  that  not  much  more  than  one- 
half  of  that  number  could  find  legitimate 
business  to  do.  The  rest  had  to  do  other 
things  or  manufacture  illegitimate  business 
on  which  to  live.  The  number  of  lawyers 
has  since  doubled. 

Is  it  medicine  that  you  are  going  to  take 
up?  There  are  more  than  150,000  doctors 
in  this  country  already,  one  to  about  every 
six  hundred  of  the  population.  You  well 
know  that  there  is  not  enough  real  sickness 
and  disease  among  that  many  people  to 
maintain  a doctor,  and  that  is  one  reason 
why  there  are  so  many  quacks  and  corrupt 
and  unworthy  men  in  the  profession.  The 
Nqw  York  Sun  some  years  ago  reported 
Dr.  Billings  as  complaining,  at  the  meeting 
of  the  American  Medical  Association  in  ses- 
sion in  New  Orleans,  of  the  excess  of 
medical  colleges.  The  country  needed  about 
2,500  medical  graduates  annually,  he  said, 
and  it  graduated  10,000  to  12,500. 

Do  you  intend  to  teach  ? There  are  more 
than  600,000  teachers  in  this  land  now,  and 
you  very  well  know  that  every  time  an  at- 
tractive opportunity  presents  itself  there 
are  scores  of  applicants. 

I present  to  you  an  opening  in  which  we 
cannot  find  enough  men,  doctors,  teachers, 
ministers,  workers  of  all  sorts,  all  over  the 
mission  field;  a thousand  million  sinning 
and  suffering  men  and  women,  and  only  a 
little  handful  of  men  and  women  giving  the 
gospel  to  them.  I do  not  understand  the 
moral  constitution  of  the  man  who  can  de- 
liberately face  that  comparison  and  then  set 
up  the  claim  that  he  feels  he  is  chosen  to 


20 


What  Constitutes  a 


practice  medicine  or  law  or  teaching  here 
in  this  country  unless  he  has  a special  call 
designating  him  as  one  of  the  men  to  go  out 
to  the  immensely  greater  need,  and  such  a 
call  as  he  has  not  regarded  as  necessary  to 
his  practice  of  medicine  or  law  or  to 
teaching. 

Or  a man  says,  yet  once  more,  “Is  not 
the  love  of  home  an  exemption?”  Let 
Jesus  Christ  reply.  “He  that  loveth  father 
or  mother  more  than  me  is  not  worthy  of 
me.”  Or  a man  says,  “Is  not  the  love  of 
life,  the  desire  to  spend  it  richly  here  an 
exemption?”  Let  Jesus  Christ  answer 
again.  “He  that  hateth  not  his  father  and 
his  mother,  and  his  brother  and  his  sister, 
yea,  and  his  own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  my 
disciple.”  Life  an  exemption ! Life  was 
given  us  on  such  terms  as  to  constitute  a 
presumption  for  its  expenditure,  not  to  be 
nursed  carefully  in  velvet,  not  to  be  spent 
in  personal  enjoyment,  but  to  be  poured  out 
in  the  richness  of  great  sacrifice. 

Every  time  I go  down  south  and  the 
train  stops  long  enough  in  Salisbury,  I go 
out  to  the  little  graveyard  in  the  middle  of 
the  town  and  walk  to  a grave  in  the  center 
of  the  yard  that  I found  many  years  ago 
when  I was  wandering  through  the  ceme- 
tery between  trains.  I remember  still  the 
first  summer  day  when  I came  upon  that 
grave.  Something  on  the  stone  caught  my 
eye  from  a distance.  I came  up  and  read 
upon  it  the  inscription  which  stated  that 
there  lay  the  body  of  F.  M.  Kent,  Lieuten- 
ant Colonel  of  the  First  Louisiana  Regulars, 
who  died  in  1864,  in  the  month  of  April, 


Missionary  Call 


21 


and  underneath  were  these  words : “He 
gave  his  life  for  the  cause  that  he  loved.” 
Near  by  was  the  grave  of  John  R.  Pearson, 
First  Lieutenant  of  the  Seventh  Regiment 
of  North  Carolina,  who  was  shot  at  Peters- 
burg, at  the  age  of  eighteen,  and  beneath 
the  name  and  simple  record  were  the  words, 
“I  look  for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead.” 
And  I took  otf  my  hat  and  stood  beside  the 
graves  of  the  eighteen-year-old  lieutenant 
and  the  older  colonel  who  had  given  their 
lives  for  the  cause  that  they  loved.  Did 
they  wait,  do  you  suppose,  until  Jefferson 
Davis  had  served  a personal  summons  upon 
them?  Was  that  the  way  men  did  in  those 
days  ? Did  they  refuse  to  volunteer  in  1861 
until  they  had,  each  man  of  them,  a per- 
sonal call  with  his  own  name  filled  in,  signed 
by  the  hand  of  Abraham  Lincoln  or  Jeffer- 
son Davis?  Men  then  despised  the  spirit 
that  would  have  prompted  such  an  attitude. 
Shall  men  do  less  than  despise  it  now? 

This  whole  business  t)f  asking  for  special 
calls  in  the  missionary  work'  does  violence 
to  the  Bible.  No  man  thinks  of  interpreting 
his  Bible  so  in  other  matters.  There  is  the 
command,  “Go  ye  into  all  the  world,  and 
preach  the  gospel  to  every  creature.”  You 
say,  “That  means  other  men.”  There  is 
the  promise,  “Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that 
labor  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I will  give 
you  rest.”  You  say,  “That  means  me.” 
You  must  have  a special  divine  indication 
that  you  fall  under  the  command ; you  do 
not  ask  any  special  divine  indication  that 
you  fall  under  the  blessing.  By  what  right 
do  we  draw  this  line  of  distinction  between 


22 


What  Constitutes  a 


the  obligations  of  Christianity  and  its  privi- 
leges, and  accept  the  privileges  as  applying 
to  every  Christian  and  relegate  its  obliga- 
tions to  the  conscience  of  the  few? 

It  does  violence  to  the  working  of  the 
spirit  of  God.  He  does  not  work  over 
men’s  faculties ; He  works  through  them. 
In  every  other  department  of  life  He  does 
it ; He  will  do  it  in  this  department,  or  He 
will  not  work  at  all. 

It  does  violence  to  the  ordinary  canons 
of  common  sense  and  honest  judgment.  We 
do  not  think  of  ordering  other  departments 
of  our  life  on  this  basis.  By  what  right  do 
we  single  out  this  department  and  apply  to 
it  these  exceptional  canons?  I think  ex- 
President  Patton  of  Princeton  was  repre- 
senting the  situation  truthfully  when  he 
used  the  illustration : that  if  he  was  em- 
ployed by  the  owner  of  a great  vineyard  to 
gather  grapes  in  the  vineyard,  and  the  gen- 
eral instructions  were  that  as  many  grapes 
as  possible  should  be  gathered,  and  he  came 
down  to  the  gate  of  the  vineyard  and  found 
there  around  the  walls  the  vines  well 
plucked  and  the  ground  covered  over  with 
pickers,  and  away  off  in  the  distance  no 
pickers  at  all  and  the  vines  loaded  to  the 
ground,  he  would  not  need  any  special  visit 
and  order  from  the  owner  of  the  vineyard 
to  instruct  him  as  to  what  his  duty  was.  Do 
we  ? 

There  is  something  wonderfully  mis- 
leading, full  of  hallucination  and  delusion 
in  this  business  of  missionary  calls.  With 
many  of  us  it  is  not  a missionary  call  at  all 
that  we  are  looking  for;  it  is  a shove,  that 


Missionary  Call 


23 


is  all.  There  are  a great  many  of  us  who 
would  never  hear  a call  if  it  came ; some- 
body must  come  and  coerce  us  before  we 
will  go  into  the  missionary  work.  There 
are  men  who  say  they  would  go  if  they 
were  called,  but  they  would  not  go.  Back 
in  Jesus’  day  men  thought  they  would  do 
things  if  they  only  had  certain  evidence,  but 
when  the  evidence  came  they  did  not  do 
them.  We  think  we  would  believe  on 
Christ  if  we  saw  Him.  Most  of  the  men 
who  saw  Him  did  not  believe  on  Him.  It  is 
the  old  rebuke  of  Abraham  over  again. 
“Father  Abraham,”  said  the  outcast,  “will 
you  not  send  some  special  messenger  to 
warn  my  brothers  ?”  Said  Abraham,  “They 
have  Moses  and  the  prophets ; if  they  will 
not  hear  them,  neither  will  they  be  per- 
suaded, though  one  rose  from  the  dead.” 
There  are  many  men  who  say  they  would 
believe  in  Christianity  if  they  had  a miracle. 
They  would  not  believe  in  Christianity  if 
they  had  a miracle.  The  men  who  will  not 
believe  in  Christianity  without  a miracle 
will  not  believe  in  Christianity  with  one. 
The  men  who  will  not  go  out  to  the  mission 
field,  as  a rule,  without  this  specified  method 
of  being  called  would  not  recognize  it  if  it 
came.  It  is  just  a matter  of  the  whole  bias 
and  bent  of  a man’s  character,  whether  he 
is  one  of  these  reluctant,  stagnant  men,  the 
men  who  stand  still  until  they  are  pushed, 
or  one  of  these  aggressive,  eager  men,  the 
men  who  move  until  they  are  stopped.  I 
like  to  go  back  and  read  over  and  over  the 
life  of  the  Apostle  Paul  as  illustrative  of  the 
right  type  of  man.  He  never  sat  down  and 


24 


What  Constitutes  a 


waited  for  a dream  to  come  and  guide  him ; 
he  never  waited  for  any  external  mechanical 
directions  to  shape  his  course.  He  was 
working  through  what  we  now  call  Asia 
Minor,  and  his  path  was  determined  by  in- 
dications of  the  Spirit,  not  as  to  what  he 
should  do,  but  as  to  what  he  should  not  do. 
The  Spirit  forbade  work  in  Asia.  He  tried 
Bithynia,  and  was  again  blocked.  So  he 
came  down  to  Troas  through  walls  of  nega- 
tive guidance  (Acts  xvi : 6-8).  Paul  did 
not  say : “I  will  wait  till  I feel  a call.”  He 
pressed  ahead  until  he  was  obstructed. 
There  is  a deal  too  much  lethargic  waiting 
for  divine  guidance,  when  what  God  is 
wanting  is  to  see  some  sign  of  life  and 
movement  to  guide.  You  can  steer  a mov- 
ing, but  not  a motionless  ship.  Doubtless  a 
man  may  bustle  about  so  in  his  own  fussy 
plans  as  to  be  in  no  fit  condition  to  hear 
divine  counsel  or  to  seek  it ; but  there  is  no 
warrant  in  Paul’s  method  for  the  course  of 
those  who  dislike  to  move  toward  the 
foreign  field  unless  compelled  from  without. 

At  the  end  of  this  hedging  in  and  hedg- 
ing off,  Paul  got  some  positive  leading ; but 
even  then  his  conclusion  of  duty  was  an  in- 
ference. He  interpreted  his  dream  in  the 
spirit  of  his  life.  He  was  a going  man  and 
he  was  looking  for  beckonings.  It  was  the 
man  not  the  dream  that  led  to  his  crossing 
into  Europe.  Some  modern  evader  would 
have  called  it  a mere  dream,  and  pronounced 
it  utterly  insufficient  reason  for  any  such 
serious  forward  step. 

Ramsay  thinks  the  Macedonian  whom 
Paul  saw  was  Luke.  How  otherwise  could 


Missionary  Call 


25 


Paul  know  it  was  a Macedonian  than  by 
recognizing  a Macedonian  acquaintance? 
There  was  nothing  peculiar  in  the  dress  of 
the  Macedonians,  and  Luke  was  probably 
the  only  Macedonian  he  knew.  “We  can 
imagine,”  says  Ramsay,  “how  Paul  came 
to  Troas,  in  doubt  as'  to  what  should  be 
done.  As  a harbor  it  formed  the  link  be- 
tween Asia  and  Macedonia.  Here  he  met 
the  Macedonian  Luke ; and  with  his  view 
turned  onwards  he  slept,  and  beheld  in  a 
vision  his  Macedonian  acquaintance  beckon- 
ing him  onward  to  his  own  country.” 

Possibly  Paul  and  Luke  had  been  sitting 
up  late  that  night  talking  about  Macedonia, 
and  Luke  had  urged  arguments  by  which 
he  would  persuade  Paul  to  come  over  there, 
and  when  Paul  went  to  sleep,  he  was  full  of 
Luke’s  arguments,  and  at  last  had  his  dream 
and  there  was  Luke  again  appealing  to  him 
to  go  over  to  Macedonia.  It  was  not  the 
dream  that  took  Paul  over.  It  was  the  last 
confirmation,  but  Paul  would  have  got  to 
Macedonia  without  any  such  dream.  The 
dream  was  not  the  call.  The  facts  of  the 
world  and  of  Paul’s  own  life  were  shaping 
his  course  according  to  the  will  of  God.  He 
was  the  sort  of  man  who  did  not  wait  for 
external  guidance,  who  sat  down  until 
somebody  came,  upset  him  and  made  him 
go ; he  was  the  type  of  man  who  fixed  his 
eyes  on  a great  goal  and  moved  toward  it. 
“Yea,”  he  says,  “so  I havq  been  ambitious.” 
What  for?  A special  call ? “Yea,  so  I have 
been  ambitious  to  preach  the  gospel,  not 
where  Christ  has  been  already  named,  lest 
I should  build  upon  another  man’s  founda- 


26 


What  Constitutes  a 


tion : but,  as  it  is  written,  To  whom  he  was 
not  spoken  of,  they  shall  see ; and  they  that 
have  not  heard  shall  undei"stand.”  (Rom. 

XV : 20,  21.) 

Well,  you  ask.  Do  I mean  that  you  should 
take  your  lives  in  your  own  hands  in  this 
matter?  That  is  precisely  what  I am  pro- 
testing against.  That  is  exactly  what  we 
have  done.  We  have  taken  our  lives  in  our 
own  hands  and  proposed  to  go  our  own  way 
unless  God  compels  us  to  go  some  other 
way.  What  I ask  is  that  we  should  give  our 
lives  over  into  Christ’s  hands,  to  go  Christ’s 
way  until  God  shall  reveal  to  us  some  spe- 
cial individual  path  on  either  side  of  that 
great  general  way  which  Jesus  Christ  has 
marked  out  before  His  church  and  for 
which  He  is  calling  everywhere  for  men. 
But  you  say,  “Do  you  mean  that  every  one 
is  to  go  or  to  try  to  go?”  No,  I do  not.  I 
am  not  trying  to  specify  any  course  of  duty 
for  any  man,  or  any  method  of  the  revela- 
tion of  duty  to  life.  God  has  His  own  way 
of  guiding  every  life.  I believe  He  wants 
men  as  Christian  lawyers,  doctors,  teachers, 
business  men,  ministers,  artisans  at  home. 
And  I believe  that  if  we  neglect  our  own 
house  or  nation  we  are  worse  than  infidels. 
What  I am  trying  to  do  is  to  cut  out  some 
of  those  quibbles  and  sophistries  and  self- 
deceptions  by  which  men  satisfy  themselves 
in  the  evasion  of  missionary  duty  and  to 
correct  honest  misconceptions  which  con- 
fuse and  mislead  men.  I plead  that  the 
missionary  duty  be  given  its  fair  consider- 
ation in  tire  investment  and  use  of  life. 

I want  to  say  three  last  things. 


Missiqnary  Call 


27 


In  the  first  place  God  does  not  want  any 
conscripts.  If  that  is  what  you  are  waiting 
for, — to  be  conscripted, — I do  not  believe 
that  the  call  will  come.  What  He  wants 
is  volunteers,  men  who  will  give  themselves 
in  the  spirit  of  Isaiah,  “Here  am  I,  Lord; 
send  me.” 

In  the  second  place,  for  each  true  Chris- 
tian the  post  of  sacrifice  and  of  difficulty  is 
the  post  of  presumptive  duty.  I do  not 
understand  how  a man  can  turn  aside  to 
make  a fortune  here,  to  gratify  an  ambition 
here,  without  a special  call.  I do  under- 
stand how  a man  can  feel  that  without  such 
a call  it  is  his  duty  to  give  himself  to  the 
post  of  greatest  toil  and  earthly  loss  and 
danger.  I remember  one  of  the  illustrations 
that  Mr.  Charles  Studd  used  when  he  was 
here,  of  the  appeal  that  was  made  for  vol- 
unteers before  the  Ashanti  expedition  went 
some  years  ago  to  Africa.  They  called  out 
at  Windsor  the  Scots  Guards,  and  the 
colonel  commanding  made  a frank  state- 
ment of  just  what  the  expedition  was  and 
what  was  involved,  and  then  he  called  for 
volunteers,  and  he  turned  away  for  a 
moment,  and  when  he  turned  back  the 
whole  line  was  standing,  apparently  just  as 
it  had  been  before.  He  looked  up  and 
down  the  line  for  a moment  in  indignation, 
and  then  he  said,  “What ! the  Scots  Guards, 
and  no  volunteers !”  and  one  of  the  officers 
standing  by  said,  “Colonel,  the  whole  line 
stepped  forward.”  They  were  not  waiting 
for  any  specific  personal  injunction.  Every 
man  jumped  at  the  chance  of  sacrifice, 
recognized  in  the  call  to  hardship  and  dan- 


28 


What  Constitutes  a 


ger  the  glorious  call,  and  would  only  be 
turned  back  from  it,  as  Gideon’s  com- 
panies turned  back,  when  specially  ex- 
empted by  the  elimination  of  God. 

And,  last  of  all,  I think  love  will  hear 
calls  where  the  loveless  heart  will  not  know 
that  they  are  sounding.  Will  you  look  in 
your  own  heart  again  and  make  sure 
whether  or  not  the  call  has  not  been  there 
all  the  time?  Have  you  been  near  enough 
to  Jesus  Christ  to  hear  Him  speak?  Has 
your  heart  been  open  enough  to  the  world 
in  sympathy  and  love  to  hear  the  wail  of  its 
woe?  If  there  were  a hundred  little  chil- 
dren crying,  a mother  would  be  able  to  pick 
out  the  voices  of  her  own,  especially  if  they 
were  voices  of  pain  and  suffering.  There 
is  a mighty  keenness  in  the  ears  of  love, 
and  I wonder  whether,  after  all,  that  may 
not  explain  a great  deal  that  one  is  per- 
plexed over  in  this  matter  of  special  mis- 
sionary calls,  whether  after  all  it  is  not 
often  just  a matter  of  callous  heart,  of  re- 
luctant will,  of  sealed  mind. 

God  so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave. 
It  was  need  in  the  world  plus  love  in  God 
that  constituted  the  call  to  Christ.  Do  we 
need  more  than  sufficed  for  Him?  If  they 
were  our  own,  would  we  hesitate  and  hold 
back? 

“What  if  your  own  were  starving, 
Fainting  with  famine  pain. 

And  yet  you  knew  where  golden  grew 
Rich  fruit  and  ripened  grain, 

Would  you  turn  aside  while  they  gasped 
and  died. 

And  leave  them  to  their  pain  ?” 


Missionary  Call 


29 


Let  us  lay  aside  now  all  double-dealing, 
all  moral  subterfuge,  all  those  shuffling 
evasions  by  which  the  devil  is  attempting  to 
persuade  us  to  escape  from  our  duty,  and 
let  us  get  up  like  men  and  look  at  it  and  do 
it.  Students  are  old  enough  to  decide  to  do 
their  duty.  They  .are  old  enough  to  decide 
to  go  to  college,  they  are  old  enough  to  de- 
cide for  law  and  medicine  and  other  pro- 
fessions ; they  are  old  enough,  too,  to  decide 
this  question  also.  God  forbid  that  we 
should  try  behind  any  kind  of  pretext  to 
hide  from  the  solemn  personal  consideration 
of  our  vital  duty.  “Go  ye  out  into  the 
ignorant  and  sinful  world  and  preach  the 
gospel  to  the  lost.”  Have  you  any  reason 
for  not  going  that  you  could  give  to  Jesus 
Christ  ? That  is  the  real  question  for  every 
man  of  us. 


% 


.1 


•N.'' 


p 


; 


i. 


;) 


\ 


N. 


•1  , 


y,; 


■ N' 


i 

t 


I 


J 


Other  Life-Work  Literature 
Published  by  the 

Interchurch  World  Movement 


THE  FULFILMENT  OF  LIFE.  By  G.  Campbell 
Morgan.  Per  copy,  5 cents;  per  doz.,  50  cents;  per  100, 
$2.75. 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  GUIDANCE— By  S.  D.  Gordon. 
Per  copy,  5 cents;  per  doz.,  50  cents;  per  100,  $2.75. 

HOW  TO  KNOW  THE  WILL  OP  GOD— By  Henry 
Drummond.  Per  copy,  5 cents;  per  doz.,  50  cents;  per 
100,  $2.75. 

RELIGION  IN  THE  HOME— By  Walter  W.  Moore. 
Per  copy,  5 cents;  per  doz.,  50  cents;  per  100,  $2.75. 

THE  PATH  INTO  THE  WILL  OF  GOD— By  Edwin  M. 
PoTEAT.  Per  copy,  2 cents;  per  doz.,  20  cents;  per  100, 
$1.00. 

THINE  ONLY  SON.  or  THE  STEWARDSHIP  OP 
FAMILY  LIFE — By  Edwin  M.  Poteat.  Per  copy,  2 
cents;  per  doz.,  20  cents;  per  100,  $1.00. 

HOW  I FIND  THE  WILL  OF  GOD— By  George 
Mueller.  Per  copy,  1 cent;  per  doz.,  10  cents;  per  100, 
50  cents. 

HOW  TO  FIND  YOUR  LIFE-WORK.  By  J.  Campbell 
White.  Per  copy,  1 cent;  per  doz.,  10  cents;  per  100, 
50  cents. 

WHY  I AM  GLAD  I AM  A MINISTER— Testimonies  of 
Fifteen  Ministers.  Per  copy,  10  cents;  per  doz.,  75  cents; 
per  100,  $6.00. 

HOW  CAN  PASTORS  AND  OTHER  LEADERS  HELP 
YOUNG  PEOPLE  TO  FIND  THEIR  LIFE-WORK?— 
By  J.  Campbell  White.  Per  copy,  1 cent;  per  doz.,  10 
cents;  per  100,  50  cents. 

_ The  following  cards  have  been  prepared  for  individual 
signature  of  consecration  and  life-purpose; 

One  for  Parents. 

One  for  High-School  Age. 

One  for  College  Students. 

Samples  of  these  cards  free  in  quantities,  at  following 
nominal  prices  to  prevent  waste,  20  cents  per  100. 

A packet  containing  a sample  of  all  this  material  will  be 
sent  postpaid  for  25  cents. 

Write  for  descriptive  list  of  Life-Work  charts  on  art  paper, 
24  X 36  inches.  Price  30  cents  each  or  four  for  $1.00,  post- 
paid. 


No.  216.  L.  W.  TTI.  100.  Jan.  ’20 


